


An Evergreen Forest

by bodylikeabattleaxe



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-29
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-02-15 07:12:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 22,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2220204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bodylikeabattleaxe/pseuds/bodylikeabattleaxe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the war has ended, Johanna invites Katniss to visit her. Katniss is still working through all the war left her with. Johanna is there to help this process along, and has secrets of her own to work through. Johanna/Katniss</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Between the Districts

It has been over a year since the war ended, but there are some nights I can still feel it raging inside me. I throw the blankets and sweat and scream. Even though Peeta and I have been spending a lot of time together, I can’t let him back in my bed. And I certainly can’t deal with him asking me if I love him.

I don’t know if I can love at all.

This morning is typical for late spring, with the air growing unexpectedly warm. Outside there are birds chirping and I think I hear the rustling of a squirrel. I make a mental note to go hunting later. 

The phone rings. Expecting a call from Dr. Aurelius, I bound down the stairs and pick up. I do not expect the clear, feminine voice that comes from the receiver.

“Hey there, brainless. How are you?” Johanna’s old nickname for me is no longer mocking, just habit. She sounds sweet and calm. Much different than the ‘unstable’ girl I’d left in Thirteen.

“Johanna! I’m getting by. How are you? Where are you?”

“I went back to Seven. Stuff’s okay, really.”

“That’s great.”

There’s a pause as we both struggle for what to say. I want to apologize to her for not being able to get her to the Capitol, but also congratulate her for not having to be there. I don’t even know what she wanted to say to me.

“There’s not many people up here in Seven, though. I mean, we didn’t have that many to start with. But now it’s just sort of, empty.”

“Oh. Twelve’s kind of the same way.”

“Do you…” she pauses, and giggles. Not in her old way, that dark chuckle she’d get because the world was so absurd. This was a happy sort of laugh. “Do you want to come visit? Now that we can travel between the districts and all. I figured you might like it up here – lots of woods. A lot of quiet, too.”

Even though I’d never really thought of Johanna and I as true friends, I suddenly feel like we might be. We might at least be growing close to friends. Only friends called each other up to visit. At first I feel nervous, as if I shouldn’t be alone with Johanna. But she never truly attacked me with malice, and she didn’t seem to hold things against me - besides the few times she was using things as leverage to get my morphling. We’d lived together and been just fine. And the truth is, I’m getting pretty tired of Twelve. There are only so many book pages of sad memories to fill. Only so many squirrels to hunt. And only so many times I could look into the desperate eyes of Peeta and Haymitch.

“I’d love to. I can be there in about two days.”

“Perfect. I’ll see you soon.”

I hang up the phone right as Greasy Sae walks in to make me breakfast. Peeta and Haymitch will be here around lunchtime, bearing the book of memories we’ve been filling out together. I go upstairs and grab a few bags in my bedroom, packing quickly. I then realize I have almost nothing to pack. Some clothes, my father’s jacket, my weapons. I grab the soap and toothbrush from my bathroom just to fill more space. I’d rather not just disappear on Peeta and Haymitch, but I also don’t particularly feel like saying goodbye. When I get downstairs to eat, I tell Greasy Sae that she doesn’t have to come by for a week or two, and to let the guys know that I’ve gone on a trip to see a friend. She just nods and smiles at me.

As I’m leaving the kitchen, Buttercup nudges my leg, begging for bacon. I know if I leave him here he can fend for himself, but he is the last piece of… I swallow those thoughts; I don’t have time to cry right now. I just don’t want to leave him behind again, don’t want him running off somewhere wondering where I’ve gone now. I fashion him a leash out of an old belt and place him in a hunting bag. At this point he’s gotten used to being stuffed in sacks and carried around places. He doesn’t even howl.

I sneak out the back door of my house and down the hill into town. The train station is fairly empty. I remember being here the first time I left for the games, when we started the Victory Tour, and when I was reaped for the Quarter Quell. It’s always been such a daunting place, but now it seems calm, beckoning me with a different kind of journey. There is an old man at a booth selling passenger tickets to the various districts. This is so strange to see – I can just walk up here and go any place in Panem that I’d like. Before, they kept us all drastically separate and only allowed us to catch manufactured glimpses of the other districts on television screens. But now, here I am, free to travel anywhere.

I get a ticket for Seven, which they tell me is about a day and a half’s journey. My private sleeper cabin isn’t as luxurious as I remember from traveling on other Capitol trains, but the small bed and bathroom are more than enough for me. As soon as I get inside I let out Buttercup. He immediately jumps onto the chair across from me and hisses. At least he seems to be getting back to normal.

For most of the train ride, I’m asleep. These days it seems like I can’t sleep enough. At first when I slept by the fire it was just to shut everything out. But now, sleeping feels more like healing, renewal. My body is still scarred and banged up from battle. I figure if I eat and sleep enough; it’ll start to mend.

“Next stop: District Seven station,” announces the intercom.


	2. The Reunion

Hurriedly, I gather up all my things and slip Buttercup back into his bag. I realize while getting off the train that I forgot to call and tell Johanna that I was almost there and start to panic slightly. I don’t know anyone here. The rebellion may be over but who knows if someone could still have an itching to go after the easily recognizable Mockingjay. My anxiety melts away as I step into the terminal and spot a familiar face.

She looks so much better that she’s practically glowing. Her hair has grown out, but is still fairly short and swept off to the side. She’s gained weight and muscle. I can tell her body has filled out again. She’s wearing a simple grey shirt and dark denim pants with tough-looking leather boots. Any nerves I had about being around her again are wiped away by her bright smile.

“Hey there! Let me help you with those.” Johanna grabs the bag containing Buttercup, which howls loudly. “Okay, let me help you with a bag that doesn’t growl at me.”

“Sorry, it’s my cat.” I freeze, worried that I should’ve asked her before I carried along this stowaway. “Is that okay?”

“It’s fine. Let’s just hope he gets along with my dogs.” Johanna has two of my bags under her arms and turns to lead me out of the station.

“You have dogs? Wild dogs?”

“No, they’re not wild. At the risk of sounding totally Capitol, they’re my pets. You’ll get to meet them pretty soon. Here’s my car.”

Johanna is standing next to a silver automobile that looks almost military, with its rugged tires and boxy frame. I laugh slightly. “Having a car seems a lot more Capitol than having a dog.”

“You need one out here. We’re pretty spread out. The ride up to my place takes a while, maybe an hour or so. Here, you can let the cat out in the back, I have a little net up so the dogs can ride back there.” Her voice then drops. “But if he shits in my car, you’re cleaning it up.”

There’s the Johanna Mason I know. She’d seemed almost too nice on the phone.

I climb into the car and we start to ride through the town. Seven is definitely bigger than Twelve. I couldn’t remember much from my tour, just a flicker of forests and a building or two. The main town has a quite a few streets lined with shops, like a butcher and what appears to be an axe store. Johanna tells me that there wasn’t really much fighting done up here, since it was far away from other Districts, and it was poor like Twelve so there weren’t many resources to bicker over. You’d think it was untouched if it weren’t for the crumbled Justice building we pass by.

After we get through the town, we turn onto a long road lined with impossibly tall evergreen trees. Johanna smiles at me, then presses a button that opens the roof of her car. Though when I reach my hand out, I hit a window.

“It’s like a skylight for a car. I figured you’d wanna see the famous District Seven trees.”

We have a few pines back in Twelve, so I know their shape, but these are entirely different. They reach far into the sky, their trunks naked for ten feet, allowing you to stare right through the base of the forest. It seems to go for twenty miles. I lean back my chair and stare through the skylight, watching as the treetops whiz past. Johanna lowers her window slightly and I lose myself in the scent of pine needles. Suddenly the trees grow taller until we are nearly surrounded, and I lift my body up to look around.

“I live on the other side of this mountain by a big lake. It’s pretty secluded. It was nice to get out of the Victor’s Village.  This place is amazing; I think you’ll like it. Plenty of room for you to hunt, too. I know I wouldn’t mind some good meat that didn’t come from a butcher who stares at my ass every time I just want a damn lamb chop.”

“Says the girl who practically forced me to stare at her ass the first time we met,” I chuckle, remembering the tree costume she shed.

“Well, I wanted you to do that.” Johanna says this with a joking smile. But somewhere at the end when her lips uncurl I see a flicker in her eye I can’t exactly place.

 


	3. Johanna's Cabin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A glimpse at Johanna's home. Warning, a little mature language.

As we drive further up the mountain, Buttercup howls in the back, probably not used to the altitude. Soon, Johanna tells me we’re almost at her house, and I’ll be glad just to shut the cat up. We head back down the mountain to the other side and turn onto a small dirt road. The road winds along until it opens up to a huge patch of land. I nearly cry it’s so beautiful.

Johanna’s house is a majestic log cabin. As if I should’ve expected any different from the District 7 girl. The logs that make it up seem huge compared to the skinny trees of twelve. Behind the cabin sits a beautiful clear lake with snow-capped mountains in the distance. I can smell the difference in the air here – clean, untouched. This kind of wilderness is different than the woods and the Meadow I’m used to. Gone are the soft grasses and multicolor tree-tops. They are replaced with a dense wall of trees, the floor of brown pine needles, and the slight chill nipping in the wind. I take a deep breath in and keep looking around, catching Johanna’s eyes. Then a small chorus of barking starts up. Johanna’s smile melts into concern as I realize my expression must have darkened. Barking, like the mutts in my first game, their dead eyes…

“Hush! Shhh, quiet now. Go back inside.” I hear Johanna talk to the dogs but I turn away, my vision clouding. I haven’t felt a deep flashback like that in a long time. That memory, the fear of death, comes and goes quickly now. It’s like my lungs get ripped out for only a second then plunge back in, and for a moment all I can do is make them breathe again.

Her hand is on my arm. The cool metal of the car pushes against my back. The barking is gone. I face her.

“Hey, I’m really sorry, I didn’t know you were scared of dogs,” she sounds almost like she’s holding back tears.

“I’m not, really. There were mutts in my first game that looked like dogs, well, wolves. They had the eyes of the other tributes. Possibly their actual eyes, implanted into the mutts.”

Johanna shakes her head and looks at the sky, biting her lip. For a second it’s like we’re back in an arena and she’s speaking to the disembodied Capitol listening in. “God, fuck them.”

“I know. Sick motherfuckers.”

Johanna’s eyebrows raise and I clap my mouth shut. I didn’t expect that phrase to show up, I’ve never said much worse than damn.

“Sorry. I needed that.”

“Hey, no reason to apologize. I see you’ve been saving up that word.”

I lift myself up from the car and Johanna opens the back. We grab my things, stuffing Buttercup back into his bag briefly. Johanna holds the door for me and I release Buttercup, then stop after a few steps to drink it all in.

I am standing in a huge living room with a window that takes up the whole wall. Outside there is a view of the lake so smooth it could be made of glass. Inside there are plush chairs, a white fluffy carpet, and a fireplace crackling. To my right the room flows seamlessly into a kitchen. Everything is wood – the floors, the walls, the window frames. Somehow it still manages to smell like pine needles even inside. I walk over to the window, and I can see now that there is a dock and a small roofed structure on the water, while around the middle of a lake there seems to be a little house on an island.

“Who lives out there?”

Johanna has set my stuff at the base of a staircase I didn’t notice before and she starts to walk over to me. “That’s my lake house. It’s pretty tiny, just a bed and a kitchen. It’s nice to get away though.”

“Why,” I pause, gesturing around the room. “Would you want to get away from all this? It’s beautiful. This is an incredible house.”

“I used to live in a pretty tiny place. Sometimes I miss that.”

I’m reminded of my cramped house back in District Twelve where I used to store a few elements of my old life after we moved into the Victor’s Village. I would go there and look at the empty home and remember how we used to live. Even when I was all alone there, it still felt more like home.

“Here, let’s bring your stuff up to your room,” Johanna says quietly, her hand on my shoulder. She shows me up the staircase and into a decent-sized bedroom.

“Wow, this is really nice. Thank you.” I looked around the room – it was a pale blue with plaid sprinkled around, like the comforter on the bed or the curtains on the window.

“No problem. I had them build a guest room sort of hoping someone would get to stay in it.” She rakes her hand across the dresser and blows softly. “I had to dust it before you got here.”

“You built this house?”

Johanna nods and walks out of the room as she leads me back down the stairs. “Well I didn’t build it myself, but I had it built for me and I helped along the way when I could. I didn’t want to move back into that terrible house at the Victor’s Village.”

I know what she meant. It didn’t matter how nice those houses were, they would always be bloodstained.


	4. The Sad Little Book

Johanna leads me into her kitchen, and from the first look I can tell she must cook there often. In addition to a refrigerator and stove, it has all sorts of gadgets I haven’t seen outside of the capitol – blenders, toasters, a real coffee maker that doesn’t use a kettle. I walk through to the dining nook and settle into the plush bench. Johanna pulls what appears to be a duck out of the refrigerator and plops it into a large pan. While she cooks we keep chatting on. Most people would have talked about light subjects, but it seemed Johanna and I didn’t have the ability for small talk. I mention Prim and my heart lurches. Johanna rests her hand on my shoulder to comfort me, but I just change the subject. I tell her about my time sleeping by the fire, about Greasy Sae, then mention Peeta, Haymitch, and the book we were making.

Johanna is cutting carrots and begins gesturing with the knife. “You’re making a sad little book? That’s what you’ve been spending all your time on?”

“It’s not just a sad little book, it’s a way for me to cope. I have to make up for the guilt somehow.”

“The guilt of what?”

“Of all the people I killed, Johanna. Or all the ones who have died because of me.”

She shakes her head at me. “You had nothing to be guilty about. You did what you had to do. We both did. The Capitol forced you, it’s not like you wanted any of it. I watched you in the Games. You killed out of necessity. You don’t have to make a sad little book for the people the Capitol made you kill.”

“It wasn’t just the Games—”

“Katniss,” Johanna stares at me as her hands release chopped carrots into a pan. I know exactly what those eyes mean.

 _Everything was a part of the Games_.

And she’s right. The war itself was a game, with traps and pods and strategies. Even when I didn’t want to be a piece of it, I still was when I was forced to kill. Because they’d turned killing itself into a game.

“Now I’m a little pissed at Dr. Aurelius saying it was a good idea for me to make my sad little book.”

We both laugh, and Johanna gets back to cooking. A part of me is relieved – that book was getting pretty tedious, after all. We have an incredible meal of roast duck and vegetables. As much as I like Greasy Sae’s cooking, Johanna’s is much more about enjoying the food than just making ugly ingredients salvageable. I don’t even notice until the end that she has stuffed the duck with apples.

After dinner, I’m exhausted, and we both end up going to bed early. I set out a small tray of duck scraps for Buttercup. Johanna tells me she’s feeding the dogs and disappears off somewhere in the house. The room she has me in is small and comfortable, though the bed feels stiff from not being used in so long. At first when I’m falling asleep I feel fine. Then the nightmares begin.

I am back in the Quarter Quell and Finnick’s jabberjays make the sound of a crying baby. I am in Twelve with the firebombs raging and I try to carry Prim out on my back. I run through the Capitol as the scent of roses chokes me. Peeta tries to kiss me and I shoot an arrow through his heart.

When I wake up I’m not screaming, but the blankets are gone and I am gripping the sheets so hard that my hands hurt. I have to remind myself of where I am as I look around the pale blue room. I get out of bed and go towards a door at the end of the hall, silently creaking it open.

Johanna’s room is flooded with moonlight. She has a large triangular window on the far side of the room and her lily-white bed is tucked against it. I walk up to it slowly. The bed is bigger than I’ve ever seen – almost ten feet across. Johanna is sleeping dead center. I gently lift the plush comforter and slip underneath. She doesn’t stir. I sink into the fabric and melt into sleep again. 


	5. The Lay of the Land

In the morning Johanna is gone and the scent of bacon fills the house. I look around the room, catching details that were lost in the dark. On the wall across from me there are two golden axes hanging crossways. Next to the bed there are two doors. I hope one is a bathroom, and open the door closest to me.

The room is full of light. The two exterior walls are made entirely of smooth glass windows. On the floor there are various pillows spread out over the carpet. I wonder for a moment why Johanna has a room with nothing but windows, wonder why there are so many windows in the house.

 _If I were locked in a cell for a few months, I’d always want to be able to see outside_.

I bite my lip. I sometimes forget the horrors Johanna faced. She looks better now; I can’t see a single scab on her. But some scars aren’t shown in skin.

When I get to the kitchen, Johanna is humming while she makes breakfast. She smiles at me and chips without an ounce of sarcasm, “Good morning, sunshine.”

“Okay, who are you and what have you done with Johanna Mason?”

“Oh hush, it’s not like I was that much of a raging bitch before.” I raise my eyebrow at her and she laughs. “Alright, I was a bitch. My head doctor has helped a lot, actually. And just being out here in the woods. And you know, no longer fearing for my life or training children to be sacrificed. Anyways…”

I walk by her and pour coffee from the large glass pot.

“There’s cream in the little white pitcher. As I was saying, my head doctor says my anger has evened out a lot. I had a lot of rage from pretty understandable shit. But it’s all gone now. The shit, I mean, the rage pops up on occasion.”

“I wish I got rage instead of those stupid flashbacks.”

“Hey, I get those too. I knew a lot of other victors that got them. It’s just what happens, you have nothing to be ashamed of.” Johanna brings over two plates and sets one down in front of me in the dining nook.

Bacon, eggs, and toast. I dig in.

“I was wondering, do you think you’d be up for meeting the dogs today? It’s okay if you’re not ready yet. I’ll make sure they don’t jump or anything. They’re just getting ancy from being cooped up, and they’re gonna be around so –”

I see that Johanna is nervous and I cut her off. “I’d love to meet them.”

“Awesome.”

After breakfast, I get dressed fully, putting on my boots and my father’s jacket. I don’t want to braid my hair fully but decide to pull it away from my face as is. When I return downstairs, Johanna meets me and leads me to a door in the entryway.

“This is the dog room. I originally had it as just a sunroom, but when I got the dogs, they sort of took over. They’re big sweethearts, I promise. Are you ready for this?”

I think back to the mutts in the arena. They weren’t really wolves, and they certainly weren’t dogs. The barking reminded me of the mutts, sure. But I usually didn’t go catatonic when I was hunting a wild dog. These dogs seemed to really matter to Johanna, they had their own room even.

“I’m ready.”

            Johanna opens the door and I see two dogs perk up. They walk over to her and start licking her face. She lights up as their tails wag. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her this happy.

            “This boy here is Blue,” she begins, patting the head of a medium-sized dog with reddish-brown fur. He has a sharp muzzle, white paws, and eyes the color of the sky at mid-morning.

            I bend over and extend my hand, which Blue licks. Then look over to the much bigger dog. “And who is this giant?”

            “That’s Bear. He thinks he’s the boss, but Blue usually calls the shots.” Bear is a pretty massive dog, his head coming up to my waist. He has a round face and thick grey fur flecked with black. I kneel and he rushes forward, so I end up half-hugging him around the neck. “I think he likes you.”

            Bear pulls back a bit and I look at his eyes. They’re a yellowish-orange. And they are unmistakably the eyes of a dog, not a terrible muttation. So when Bear licks my face, I don’t object.

“Would you like to see some of the land?” Johanna asks.

I stand up and look out the glass door of the dog room. Beyond us there’s a small wooden building and a fence. I’m certainly curious.

“Definitely, show me around.”

 Johanna leads me out the door and the dogs follow us. First we approach the wood building – it’s made of flat wood, not the huge logs of the cabin, and has a green metal roof. She opens the door and I am overwhelmed with the scent of sawdust. Then she flicks on a light and the whole room seems to glow.

 Furniture. There’s hand-carved wooden furniture everywhere. I never thought I’d be amazed by a chair, but when I approach a rocking chair with swirled legs, I am in utter awe. The level of detail to each piece – small designs laid into the top of an end table, a perfect half-sphere protruding from a door – I can’t believe the artistry.

“Johanna. These are incredible. I had no idea.”

“After the Games, my talent was woodcarving. They always made me make frilly stuff – sculptures, figurines, useless shit like that. But in my spare time I took up making things that mattered, like a proper carpenter,” she runs her hand over the smooth length of an unfinished shelf. “What was your talent again?”

“Fashion design. It was Cinna’s talent, actually.” I choke back the sad memory and pick up a polished wooden triangle, which I’m sure is supposed to be a piece of something but I don’t know what. “I’m not particularly good at anything.”

“Oh, don’t say that. You’re pretty good at inciting rebellion.”

For a moment, the old Johanna is there. The one who prompted Peeta to nearly spin out again at a dinner table in Thirteen. The girl who insulted me in the dead of night as she was withdrawing from morphling.

“Seriously?” I ask her, hoping my words come out just as biting as I intend them to be.

“Shit. I’m sorry. I told you, the shit is gone but the rage keeps going sometimes. Not that I’m raging at you. It’s past rage, which makes it even worse. I’m sorry!” She has made her way over to me and then envelops me in a hug. I don’t expect it and it takes me a second to reciprocate.

We understand each other in a lot of ways, Johanna and me. In that, I completely understand the stupid comments that can fly out. The pent up anger and frustration. It feels ridiculous now that the Capitol is gone. There’s no one left to be angry at. Now we both have a lot of darkness buried inside that has nowhere to be released.

I grip Johanna tighter and say, “It’s okay.”

“You’re sweet,” she whispers. As we draw apart I think I see a glint of a tear in her eye. “Here, let’s get out of here, the sawdust is getting to me.”

Yeah, a girl from District 7 can’t handle being around sawdust. Very convincing.

Johanna leads me over to where I saw the fence before. I see now it isn’t a fence around the property – it’s containing a garden. It’s so big I almost want to call it a farm. She walks with me along the edge, pointing out her crops: cabbage, onions, blueberries, radishes, carrots, beans, turnips… The list keeps going and I can hardly keep up anymore. She tells me that she just likes having her own food around, and gardening is a good way to keep busy out here. It seems like a lot of food for one person, but I don’t question it.

The next place she takes me is on the other side of the house – a building almost identical to the carpenter’s shop except it’s a little smaller. And instead of sawdust, it reeks of fruit.

“What is this?” I look around at the huge glass bottles with strange stoppers, the large barrels lined along the walls of the building.

“It’s my distillery.”

My nose wrinkles involuntarily.

“Hey now, this isn’t like that gross liquor Haymitch used to guzzle.” I shoot her a quizzical look and she shrugs. “He talked about it when we saw each other in the Capitol, he’d always say how the only thing he missed about the place was its fine alcohol.”

“So what is this stuff, then?”

“It’s wine. Nice wine. The kind of wine you’re not supposed to have more than three glasses of because it’s about the taste more than being drunk. It’d be hard to get drunk off of anyways, it doesn’t have nearly as much alcohol as liquor. I brew it from the fruit I grow, with a few fruits from town.” She points to various barrels, which have small labels meticulously carved onto the side. “There’s a blueberry-huckleberry wine, I think it ended up too sour but I’m partial to it anyways. This is apple with figs and apricots. It’s a great sweet wine. I also make some with just plain red grapes, that’s the normal kind of red wine. I don’t like it as much, but it sells really well.”

“You sell the wine?” I’m reminded of Ripper back home.

“I do. The furniture too, actually, after I finished making everything for the house. I promise the wine really isn’t about getting drunk. This stuff tastes wonderful, it has some heart to it as well so it could actually fill you up a little bit. And I don’t sell it to anyone who’s intending to get hammered.”

I nod. I don’t know why I felt so object to Johanna selling wine, I’d drank a few times in my day anyways. I wonder why she sells anything at all, as she probably has a lot of money from before. Though I’m sure the house cost a lot.

“Do you wanna see the lake?”

My eyes must have brightened because Johanna doesn’t wait for a response before she grabs my hand and pulls me out the door. We walk down towards the lake together. The closer we get the huger it seems. My mind wanders to the lake back in the woods by Twelve; where my father and I would go swimming, where the plants that I’m named for grow by the dozens. It was the biggest body of water I ever saw until the Quell, and that was man-made. But this lake stretched on for miles. When we get close to the water, I look at Johanna and remember when she was scared to go out in the rain.

“Can I ask you something?”

We’re standing about ten feet from the water, next to a dock and some sort of floating shed. Johanna has her hands in her pockets and she looks towards the mountains. Her lips form a slight smile.

“Sure.”

“If you’re scared of water, why did you decide to live next to a lake?”

“I’m not really that scared anymore. I can take showers, though my shower doesn’t have any walls. I don’t have to hide when the rain comes. When I was looking for a new place to live, the lake stood out to me. It helped me get over the fear, really. The first time I got in a boat I thought I’d die. But it was okay, and after a while it was fun, and now I love going out on the lake. So much that I built the lake house.” Johanna’s voice is almost ethereal as she stares out across the lake. A girl who couldn’t even take a shower decided to conquer her fear by taking a boat onto a massive lake. One thing was for sure, Johanna didn’t half-ass anything.

“You’re really brave, you know that?”

A blush creeps up her cheeks and her smile widens. She playfully hits my arm, rolling her eyes at me. “Oh hush.”

The dogs dart off into the woods. I have forgotten about them until this moment. It’s strange how something that caused me a breakdown becomes little more than a shadow, just by looking at their eyes. I follow them through the woods, as the naked trunks allow me to see far into the forest, but they travel up towards the house. There’s a scuffle, then Blue bounds down to us with a large squirrel in his mouth.

“See?” Johanna picks up the squirrel by the tail. “I told you that you could hunt here.”

I pick up the squirrel from Blue, who lets it go without a second thought. He must be well trained to give up his prize like that. “Not too bad, I could get some meat out of it.”

“Do you wanna go hunting? We could go around the woods,” Johanna pauses and I can tell she probably sensed a hint of discomfort from me. “Or you could go out on your own, I don’t mind. Just don’t get lost, okay?”  
           

I feel bad. I don’t mean to exclude Johanna from hunting, I’m just not used to hunting with anyone but Gale. Thinking about Gale with his job far away makes me seethe slightly, with some sort of discomfort or jealousy that I can’t get clear sight of. I fight it off as we get back to the house and I grab my bow. I look around the house for Johanna to say a quick goodbye, but can’t find her. I hope I haven’t hurt her feelings. I can make it up to her by bringing back a good haul.

Once I am in the forest, I realize this will be much more difficult than I thought. The naked tree trunks and lack of shrubs leave me little cover. Even though I can be quiet, there’s not much that can replace a good hiding spot. I head deeper into the woods, careful to keep Johanna’s garden in sight. I look back at her house, and have a startling memory of the poor crumpled girl covered in scabs that came back from the Capitol.

A part of me feels like I owe her, but then again, I know she wouldn’t want that. Johanna isn’t one to accept pity, and owing someone feels a lot like pity. I was eager to get here because I needed to get away from Twelve – but why did Johanna want me here? I think back to the Quell. I remember Johanna’s listless eyes as she said “there’s no one left that I love.” Is she just lonely? After living and training together, I’m probably the closest thing she has to a friend. But the way she’s caring for me, like keeping her dogs inside just to make sure I wasn’t scared again, there’s something else. Maybe she feels guilty for all the times she was, as she put it, a raging bitch to me. All the biting comments, the way she used to make fun of me, the time she slapped me on the beach during the Quell. I was pretty sure she hated me. And I was ready to kill her. But now the Games are over. Johanna and I both know that the Games change you, and now that they’re over we’ve become different people. Exactly who is the post-Games Johanna?

 


	6. The Truth in the Bottle

All this thinking has left me with little time to hunt. I end up bagging a few squirrels and head back to the house as the sun is setting. When I get inside the dogs run up to me. They sniff the squirrels and bark happily at my return.

“How was it?” Johanna walks into the living room, wiping her hands on an apron. She’s wearing a patterned apron – I remember seeing them once or twice at the Capitol, the cooks at the parties would wear them. It is a pale bluish color and covered with tiny pine trees and a ruffled trim. It’s, dare I say it, cute.

Well, I know one thing: post-Games Johanna is someone who’s willing to wear a cute frilly apron.

“Not too bad,” I answer, holding up the squirrels. “I’m not used to hunting with these big pine trees. There’s no bushes or anything to hide behind.”

Johanna takes the squirrels from me and plops them onto what looks like a freshly cleaned counter. She then begins to skin them expertly.

“I’d never really thought about that, but it’s a good point. Maybe we can get you some camouflage or something. There’s always fishing too, can you fish?”

Johanna seems pretty eager to please, and I find it sweet. “I’ve never fished much, but I can definitely try.”

“I’ll get us some new rods and lures. We can fish later in the week.” After skinning the squirrels she hands the skins to the dogs. “Outside, you two.”

I watch the dogs obediently walk through the doggie door hidden on the window. They pass over a deck and head down towards the lake to play with their treat.

“They’re pretty cool, the dogs. Though they must’ve scared Buttercup, I haven’t seen him downstairs yet.” I pause, then realize Buttercup probably hasn’t gone outside since we got here. “Hey, do you have any sand? He used a pan of sand in Thirteen, I don’t want him to uh…”

“Shit anywhere? Yeah, I can fix one up. Here, you clean the squirrels.”

Johanna grabs a roasting pan and disappears outside. I like cleaning the squirrels. It’s methodical. Like Peeta and the plant book he helped me make. I pause and look at my bloodied hands– I hadn’t thought about Peeta in a few days. He didn’t know where I was right now. What if he thinks something bad has happened to me? I’ve been so clouded trying to push him out of my mind, and out of my bed back home, I’ve forgotten that we used to be friends. I spot a telephone on the wall next to Johanna’s refrigerator and dial the numbers.

“Hello?”

“Hey Peeta.”

“Katniss!” He sounds purely elated, which is interesting because he hasn’t had many high moments since we got back to Twelve. “Greasy Sae told us you’d left – where are you? Are you in Two?”

Gale. Peeta thinks I’ve gone to see Gale. Something about this stings. “No, Peeta, I’m in Seven.”

“Seven? Who’s in Seven?”

I realize what’s stinging. He doesn’t ask if I’m okay. All he seems to care about is whether I’ve seen Gale, or who I’m seeing here. “It doesn’t matter, I just figured I’d check in. I thought you might be worried, but it’s clear that you aren’t.”

“Katniss, of course I was worried, you just up and left.”

“Were you worried that I might not be okay, or were you worried that I was with Gale?”

There’s a pause. Peeta tries to say something. I hang up, because I don’t want to hear his voice and I am certainly not up for a game of Real or Not Real.

I go back to cleaning the squirrels. Once I’m done, I pull a roasting pan from the drawer I saw Johanna go in earlier and load up the meat. I’m not an excellent cook, but after living in the Victor’s Village for a while I figured out the basics of the oven.

I’m washing my hands when I hear Johanna enter the kitchen. “I set up the pan in your room, if that’s okay. Buttercup doesn’t seem to have left there the whole day. You know, I prefer dogs, but he’s not too bad.”

I turn around to see she is holding Buttercup in her arms. He is purring up a storm and nuzzles against her. She pets his head and he looks up, meowing at her. He hasn’t connected with anyone like that since Prim. I feel tears brimming.

“He likes you.”

“I like him, too. Oh, are you cooking the squirrel?” Johanna peeks into the oven. At first it looks like she might drop Buttercup but he just snuggles further into her grip.       

“I just put it in a pan, it’s always better fresh.”

“Nice. I figured after dinner we could,” she flips her hair dramatically, “retire into the library for a glass of wine.”

“You have a library?” I’m not entirely familiar with the concept of a library. I’ve heard of it before, it’s a place to keep books, I think. Kind of like our study.

“Yeah, it’s next to the living room. I’ve got a few books. Seven being paper and all, we have a lot around.”

We have a nice dinner of roasted squirrel with cabbage and onions that Johanna cooks in a frying pan. Good vegetables are hard to come by in Twelve and having some fresh from a garden is incredible. After loading everything into the dishwasher, Johanna leads me towards the library. Though I don’t particularly want to admit it, I’m pretty eager to try her homemade wine.

The door to the library is almost hidden along the far wall of the living room, blending seamlessly into the wood except for the small bronze handle. Inside it’s a cozy little place – the wall has built-in shelves lined with books, along with a few photos and other mementos. There’s a large chest in the center carved intricately from some sort of dark wood. In the far corner by the window sits a small fireplace with two chairs next to it.

Johanna opens the chest and I see it holds the wine. Lines of green bottles are held in special racks, tilted slightly. She grabs two glasses and turns to me.

“Are you thinking sweet or more full-bodied?”

“I don’t know what full-bodied means. Give me sweet.”

She chuckles and pours an amber-colored wine into my glass.

“Here, try it like this.” Johanna swirls the darker wine in her glass and smells it, then slowly takes a few sips.

At first I feel ridiculous, but I realize why she suggested it. Swirling the wine, I can smell the subtleties in it. There’s a strong waft of apple, but after that there’s a hint of apricot and a touch of cinnamon. I take a sip. It tastes like pie.

“This is incredible!” I drink a bit more and Johanna smiles. “You’re quite the wine maker.”

“Thank you. I really like it. I got into it because I used to drink wine in the Capitol when we’d travel there every year, and I missed it. Though this is much better than Capitol wine. Theirs always tasted a little metallic, I can tell now that they didn’t age it in barrels probably in big metal drums instead.” Johanna loads a few logs into the fireplace, starting the fire expertly. We both sit down in the chairs and look out over the lake. “It was a little hard making it at first. I liked it, but I didn’t want to turn into Haymitch. Sorry, he really is a good guy, but…”

“But he’s a drunk.” I nod. This isn’t necessarily an insult to Haymitch, just fact.

“Exactly. And if I was going to make any progress getting over… all my shit, I figured I needed to be sober for it.”

A lump forms in my throat. “I, um, I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry. About everything that happened while you were in the Capitol after the Games. I feel terrible –”

“Don’t. Don’t even think about it.” Her brown eyes meet mine and pierce into me. Not with ferocity, but with a depth of seriousness. “You have no reason to feel terrible or to be guilty about what happened to me. I signed up for it before even knowing you were a part of the deal.”

“What?” I try to figure out what she means. Didn’t she sign up to save me, to get the allies I wanted, to be my ally herself?

“I’m going to grab another bottle of wine.”

I hadn’t realized, but I’d nearly drained my glass. It was so delicious it was almost like drinking juice. This wine was entirely different from that awful, stinking white liquor we had back in Twelve. Johanna brings over two bottles – more apple wine for me and a redder one for herself. She pours me a full glass, and continues.

“I signed up because Haymitch came up to me and said ‘How would you like to fuck over the Capitol once and for all?’ I knew about a few uprisings, I figured it was on the horizon. He told me it wouldn’t be easy. I scoffed a little, I mean, I was about to go back in the Games, nothing was easy at that point. I realized what he meant though. They could torture me, burn down my house, other terrible things. But I accepted that. It was worth it to try and finish them off for good. I accepted all of that before I even knew you were going to be the key element of the plan.”

“Oh.” That’s all I can manage to say, but a huge wave of relief washes over me. I’ve spent so much time feeling guilty over other people that it feels amazing to cross one off that list. There aren’t many left that I can really do that with.

“Do you believe me?” The concern in her voice is quiet, reassuring.

“Yes.”

“Good. Don’t you dare put me in a sad little book.”

We both laugh. It feels wonderful, to just relax and look out the window with the warm feeling of wine settling over my body. Johanna brings me over a smaller glass, and lets me sample some of the other wines she’s made. There’s a divine blackberry one, an crisp white grape wine, and a cherry wine that has hints of flowers. We sip more and start to talk.

“I don’t mean to pry, but did I hear you on the phone earlier? I thought I heard something when I got downstairs.”

I grit my teeth a little, as I can feel the wine melting my ability to hold back my words. “I called Peeta.”

“It sounds like that didn’t go too well.” Johanna seems a bit melty too. She leans towards me, propping her elbow on the arm of the chair.

“I left without saying goodbye, and I thought he might be worried about me. I mean, I was tried as a war criminal, and I just disappeared one day. You’d think he’d be the least bit concerned, but no. He was just nervous that I’d run off to see Gale,” I swallow hard and take another sip of wine. I feel its heaviness in me, along with a sharp sensation of anger. “It’s just that I expected him to actually care, you know? Now that everything’s okay, I can tell that he wants to be with me again, except for real this time. Well, for ‘Real or Not Real’ I guess. But even though Gale’s certainly out of the picture, he cares more about that than whether I’m alright.”

Johanna is biting her lip slightly and shakes her head. “It honestly doesn’t surprise me.”

“What do you mean?”

She pauses, looks out the window, and I can tell she’s holding back.

“You can tell me,” I say, almost like a whisper.

“I know that I don’t know everything. But from what I saw, what I heard from people… it just seemed like both of those boys were more interested in beating each other than in actually being with you.”

Those words feel like fire and I make them smolder out with more wine. “That almost makes sense.”

“I didn’t really know about Gale at first, but I could tell you weren’t entirely into Peeta just by watching the Games. I knew he liked you because Haymitch let it slip beforehand. Through the Quell and everything, I thought there was something going on, that maybe you’d grown more into him. Or been forced to anyways.” Johanna says this with the proper venom of someone who knows what the Capitol could make you do. “But I saw how Gale was around you – he clung to you like some animal protecting his kill. It was downright creepy. And after you shot Coin, Haymitch called to check up on me. Well, that’s what he said, he was really just drunk and needed another mentor friend to rant to, I think. He spilled about the Gale thing, and said how Gale had left for District Two because ‘he knew he couldn’t win.’ I didn’t get it, and Haymitch explained that Gale knew he’d lost against Peeta forever now, Peeta was the one you were going to choose. It made me sick, really. Haymitch talking about you like a bone two dogs were fighting over.”

“That’s how I felt.” I surprise myself by speaking. Everything Johanna says sounds too real. I remember being locked up in that basement in the Capitol, overhearing Gale and Peeta discuss how I’d make my choice between them. As if it was some calculated contest that they both wanted to win. With my heart as the prize.

“You shouldn’t let them do that to you, Katniss. You’re worth more than that.” Johanna’s eyes are soft as she gazes at me and gently places her hand on mine. “Besides, I watched a contest like that destroy my mother.”

“You’ve never really talked about your family before. I wondered about them. After the jabberjays.” I trail off, blaming the alcohol for that thought slipping out. “What happened to your mother?”

Johanna grips her wine glass a bit tighter. “My mother fell in love with a man who she knew loved someone else. She was friends with her actually; they’d worked in the paper mill together. The other woman got married to a well-off wood merchant, pretty obviously for the money. My father married my mother because the woman he loved was out of reach. But right after I was born, the other woman became a widow and my father ran off with her.”

I clap my hand over my mouth. My other hand is still underneath Johanna’s. I flip it over and end up clasping hers tightly.

“It’s okay. Looking back, I hate my father less. Because he knew what he wanted, and he went after it. It was just about the feeling, you know? But for years, my mother saw it as this competition. She would try to win my father back by being better than the other woman. This woman used to be her friend, but when my father left, all my mother had was this hatred and this need to beat her. I wondered sometimes if she really loved my father. It seemed like all she cared about was being better than his current wife. Cooking better, being better at her job, making more money, everything. And I thought about that, when Haymitch talked about Gale. Because love isn’t supposed to be about winning.”

“You’re right,” I whisper. My head is swimming. All the things Peeta and Gale tried to do to win me over. The wine seeps into my memories, makes them harsher, clearer. The basement conversation. Gale only being on board with running away from Twelve if it meant the two of us being together. Peeta looking so sad when I had been caring for helpless, whipped Gale. It seemed like Gale was the one who was worse about the competition – he realized his feelings for me because an old Peacekeeper flirted with me, and he once thought Finnick had eyes for me. But Peeta didn’t like seeing me around Gale for an instant, even knowing he was my oldest friend. I think back to my phone call earlier.

“I guess it feels like they want to own me.” The wine is definitely getting to me and my words rush out before I can stop them. “Like, neither of them will be satisfied just being with me. They have to know that the other one is out of the picture. I know I’m not much better, I thought a lot about choosing between them and how I’d do it. I thought about all the things they’d both done for me. The sacrifices they’d made, the hardships they had to go through.”

“That sounds more like obligation than love.”

How is it that Johanna can see right into me? The feelings I’d never been able to place are made whole by her words. Obligation. That’s what I felt towards Peeta and Gale. Of course I’d felt things for them before – I’d felt a hunger for their kisses or a desire to be by their side again. But the emotion that floated to the top was that tugging obligation, the images of Gale feeding my family or Peeta keeping me alive in the arena.

 I feel sick. At first I think it’s because of the fact I just realized that I don’t think I ever loved either of the boys I thought I did. But then I know it’s the wine creeping up my throat. We weren’t supposed to have too much. I lunge for the log bucket next to the fire and empty my stomach. I feel so hazy. Johanna takes me upstairs and cleans me up and gives me water. I get sick again, making it to the bathroom in my room. She tries to put me in my bed and I say no, run to hers instead. I hear a clanging, see that she’s placed a new bucket on the side of her bed. Just in case, she says.

My head is so thick with hard feeling. I’m alone. I’m unlovable. Those boys never wanted me for who I was. I’m cold. Johanna gets into bed and I move towards her. I tuck my head under hers and cry. The room is spinning. She holds me and pats my back. She tells me it’s alright.


	7. Something Bigger

I wake up to a pounding in my head. My stomach is still turning. When I open my eyes I see Johanna is next to me in bed, awake and reading a book.

“How are you feeling?” she asks, and I manage an unintelligible groan. “That’s called a hangover. Come on, you need some food.”

 We walk downstairs and I settle into the dining nook, leaning my head onto my hands. Little bits of last night flash into my mind. Johanna brings me a large glass of water and coffee with cream.

 “Thank you.” My throat is scratchy. “Thanks for taking care of me last night.”  
  
 “It was no trouble at all,” she responds, though her voice isn’t as bright as I expect it to be.

“Are you okay?”

 “Yeah, just… I’m sorry for making you cry.”

I shake my head and grab her hand. “You didn’t make me cry. They did. But it feels… it feels better, thinking about all of it. Getting it sorted out in my head. Thank you for talking to me. And for telling me about your mother.”

 She nods and squeezes my hand. “You’re welcome, Katniss.”

Johanna makes egg, onion, and bacon sandwiches for breakfast. I feel worlds better once I’ve eaten. I think she can sense that I don’t want to talk further about last night, because our conversation shifts to her asking me if I want to help work in the garden later. The dogs end up in the kitchen, and I’m reminded to head upstairs to feed Buttercup.

He’s sleeping on my bed and looks like he hasn’t moved in a while. I’m worried about letting him outside, but figure I should do it soon so the poor cat doesn’t go stir crazy. He should be able to find his way back to the house. After he finishes his meal, I pick him up and creep downstairs. It sounds like the dogs are still in the kitchen so I walk into the dog room and let Buttercup out the door.

“Be careful out there, okay?” He meows loudly at me, then rushes off into the woods. I feel better knowing he can be back in nature again.

When I walk into the living room, I notice that there seems to be something outside of the window, right beyond the small deck. At first all I see is a brown bump, then an impossibly massive head pops up and it starts moving. A scream escapes me.

Johanna runs to me in the blink of an eye, her hands touching my arm. “Katniss? What is it, what’s wrong?”

“That thing!”

Her head whips around to the window, then she starts laughing. “Katniss, calm down, it’s a moose.”

I swat at her. “What the hell is a moose?”

“It’s like a big deer, we get them up here. They live in the mountains. You don’t wanna get too close but they don’t usually go after people. It’s okay.”

“That is not a big deer, it’s the size of my old house!”

“Alright, so they’re huge. But they taste pretty good.” Her eyebrow goes up. “That meat could feed you for months.”

She doesn’t have to say anymore. I figure I can get over my initial fear for such a huge haul. I run upstairs to get my bow, then slowly creep onto the porch. The moose is moving slow towards the distillery and hasn’t gotten more than 20 yards past the house. I aim an arrow for its eye, then rapid fire two into its heart. I figure a big animal like this will take a lot to take down. It’s still moving until I drive another into its leg and side. It slumps over. Johanna comes out onto the porch and slaps me gently on the back.

“Damn, you’re good.”

I beam. We don’t make it to the garden because the entire day is taken up by dealing with the moose. Johanna reveals that she knows a little about wild game, in a way that makes it clear between us that she’s also struggled for food before, but she’s never dealt with anything bigger than a beaver. I’ve been lucky enough to bag a few deer, but this moose is more massive than any animal I’ve ever encountered. Its head and neck are nearly the size of my entire body. Johanna lays out a plastic tarp and we get to work skinning it. She says we can keep the skin to use it, and ends up stretching it on the side of her carpentry shop, held in place by small woodcarving tools. The meat is cut and cleaned and we pack as much as we can into the refrigerator and freezer. Johanna then loads slices of it into a small machine to make a dry meat snack they call jerky up here. The entrails and other bits are left for the dogs to eat, and soon enough Buttercup makes his way over to pick at the carcass. I expect the dogs to go after him and get scared, but with one hiss he has asserted himself and they don’t even touch him.

I notice how well Johanna and I work together. We split up jobs easily and anticipate each other’s moves. The day whizzes past us quickly and soon all there is left to do is remove the antlers. Johanna makes quick work of this with a saw. She sets them out to dry, then piles the extra moose parts up for the dogs.

We have moose steak for a late dinner and afterwards I shower in the guest room. As I’m getting ready to sleep, I have a thought and end up going into Johanna’s room.

She’s in bed reading and there is a lamp on next to her. “Hey Katniss.”

“Hey. I um,” I pause and look at my feet. “I was wondering if I could sleep in here? Your bed’s just really comfy and I get nightmares sometimes.”

“Of course.”

I climb into bed next to her and she turns off the lamp. There’s so much room in her bed that we can sleep comfortably apart. Though a part of me wants to be closer to her.

“I get them too, you know,” she whispers.

“Nightmares?”

“Yeah. It’s not every night or anything, but they show up.”

I feel like we’re both drifting off to sleep, and our words become dreamier. “Are they about the arena?”

“They’re about everything, really. Being a mentor. The Capitol. My family.”

“Mine are about everything, too. What do you do when you wake up from one?”

“Freeze. Focus on the feeling of the bed. Remind myself where I am. You?”

“Nothing that rational. Just screech and grab the sheets.”

Johanna half-giggles. “There’s nothing that rational about them anyways.”

In the dead of night, we both end up having nightmares. I don’t remember much about mine. Just someone screaming. Across the bed, Johanna’s eyes are open and she’s stiff as a board. I move closer to her and gingerly drape my arm across her chest. She softens slightly. Her hand gently grasps my arm, as if she’s scared I’ll let go. I don’t let go all night.


	8. The Unexpected

The week goes by quickly. I decide to teach Johanna to hunt, which goes a lot better when I convince her that she can’t use an axe to take down a squirrel. Johanna starts to teach me a little about woodcarving. I never thought of myself as an artist – could never draw or paint – but soon I’m able to make a small, slightly jagged figurine of Buttercup. We both work on the moose skin, stretching it and drying it. There’s a great space for it on the living room wall. I try hunting more and I’m not having much success, so I give in to Johanna’s suggestion for fishing. Before we take the boat out she has to buy more fuel and fishing supplies, so we end up taking a trip into town.

There’s a small general store where we pick up the fuel. I end up lost in the rows – we never had a store like this is Twelve, a place for all the smaller objects like spoons or hats. Everyone either made them at home or passed them down through generations. It was one of the reasons the Capitol goods always felt strange once we moved to the Victor’s Village – you had no idea who made your shoes, and no one had ever owned your priceless table before. Johanna practically has to drag me out of there. After that I end up dragging her, as I want to see the other shops in Seven. During the Victory Tour or the rebellion, I didn’t have the chance to experience the districts. I was usually being paraded like a show horse either way. Johanna takes me to the sweets shop – full of candies, multi-color cookies, endless ropes of taffy. By the door of the shop, I notice a small wooden box with a few boxes of chocolate and peppermints, but Johanna pulls me away before I get a chance to ask about it. She shows me the Inn she stayed in while her house was being built, the clothing store where she bought her reaping dress, the butcher her family used to visit. I can tell Johanna really enjoys sharing her town with me. I remember that despite her occasional bitterness, she always had a love for home – her discomfort over Blight’s death, her love for the pine needles. Our last stop is the fruit and vegetable market. The old man behind the counter with dark skin and white-gray hair greets Johanna warmly. The beautiful carvings of vegetables hanging along the walls distract me – intricate designs of cabbages with every leaf perfectly enveloped, strawberries with every tiny seed shaped into the wood. I am running my fingertip along the stem of an apple when I hear Johanna whispering.

“I’d like some figs and raspberries for the box.”

“Of course, dear,” the shopkeeper replies, as if this is the most automatic thing he can say.

I turn around and spot a wooden box near the door, looking just like the one in the sweets shop. In it there’s a random mix of fruits and vegetables – carrots, apples, a heap of potatoes. Why are the boxes there? And why is Johanna being secretive about them?

We rush out the door as Johanna mumbles something about needing to get back to the house to feed the dogs. Once we’re back at the house she tells me we’ll leave bright and early for our fishing trip, and to pack a bag.

“How long are we staying out on this lake, Johanna?”

“Very funny,” she laughs, nudging me with her hip playfully. “I figured we could stay at the lake house for a day or two.”

“I’d like that.” I smile and look out the window. The lake house looks so tranquil over there.

The morning itself isn’t so peaceful. I’m grumpy from being woken up early and the dogs are whining since they know they’ll be left at home while we’re gone. I make it to the lake while it’s still dark out. Johanna has pulled the boat around from the floating shed structure I now know is a boathouse. I’ve never seen a boat in person before, and it’s an odd structure. About 20 feet long, shaped like an arrowhead, with a steering wheel at the back like an automobile. I shakily climb in and Johanna has to catch me when I slip on the edge. I’m still groggy, I forgot to have any coffee. We start to drift out over the water and Johanna touches my hand lightly.

“Hey, I know you’re not happy about being awake, but if you turn around you’ll see why I asked you to come out here so early.”

I think that whatever this mystery is must not be worth it, but when my eyes catch the view I know I’m wrong. Across the lake, the sun is rising, casting a pink glow over the mountains. The whole sky is lit up in mystical colors streaking over the clouds. The lake reflects the picture perfectly over its smooth surface – almost as if there are two sunrises. Perhaps the second sun is glowing from my own chest. I feel light, like a dandelion seed that could be carried away with the slightest brush of wind. This morning feels newer than any day I’ve ever faced.

We sit in silence until the sun is above the clouds, and the sunrise fades into a clear blue sky. We fish, and start to drift towards the lake house. We’re getting a great haul – four large green fish, two speckled red fish, and a small blue-finned fish that Johanna swears is the most delicious. The boat makes it to the lake house right after sunset and I hop off so quickly that I almost miss the dock.

The house is a perfect triangle that Johanna calls an A-frame, and the front is one smooth window with a door peeking through the center. Inside the large single room sits a kitchen, a small sitting area, and a fireplace. Up a steep log staircase is a loft with only a bed. Johanna was right about it being small, but it is incredibly cozy. We clean the fish and decide to cook them outside over a fire.

Overhead, there are millions of stars, without one cloud to block them out. I get a little too hot by the fire and walk over to the shore of the island to feel the cool lake breeze. Johanna walks up, standing next to me silently, her arms crossed over her chest. The light of the campfire is dancing over her face.

“I wanted to ask…” I say quietly, and her head tilts to me. “When we were in town today, you asked the shopkeeper for a few things for the box. What did you mean?”

“Look, it’s no big deal.”

“Tell me.”

She nods, pursing her lips. “Alright, do you want to hear a story?”

“Yes.”

“A couple months after I got back to Seven, I was wandering around town, buying things from every shop. There wasn’t much to do when I was staying at the Inn, it’s just there for traveling lumberjacks anyways. I liked being able to give the shopkeepers some money since they were just starting up again.” I nod, remembering spreading my wealth throughout Twelve as I could. She continues. “I was in the fruit and vegetable shop that day. There was this little girl looking through the window. She couldn’t have been more than ten. I could tell that look in her eye – she was hungry, but she knew she couldn’t get anything there. All I could think was, I did not fight in this so-called revolution for little kids to still go hungry. Before I knew it I’d bought a huge bag of potatoes and celery and just everything, and I went outside and gave it to the girl. She ran off and showed it to her parents. I can never forget the way they smiled. My mom used to wish someone would just give us food, on those nights when all we had was boiled tree bark.”

There are tears glimmering in Johanna’s eyes but she blinks them away.

“I knew there had to be more hungry people out there. It couldn’t have just been that little girl. So I asked the shopkeeper if I could fill a box with some food and leave it by the door for people to take for free. I even said I’d pay him double for it. But he was already sold on the idea; he’s a sweet man. Over the next few days I went to all the shops and offered to do the same. Maybe all the shopkeepers were just in a great mood without the Capitol breathing down their necks anymore, but they loved it. Soon people started asking about the boxes and they helped out. They’d buy a little extra when they could – a few rolls, a couple pieces of chicken. It’s really caught on. I guess now, after the revolution, everyone wants to help each other out a little more. And I have a running tab at all the shops in town just in case the boxes get low.”

Johanna looks away almost immediately as she finishes explaining, as if she’s embarrassed. Things fall into place in my head – the extra food in her garden, her selling the furniture and wine. I’m almost in shock. “Johanna, that’s incredible.”

“I don’t want them to think of it as charity, or pity… I just wanted to make sure no one would have to go hungry again, you know?” Her voice gets quiet.

Our stares meet, and I look into her deep brown eyes. Johanna Mason is a hero. She has created a way for an entire district to take care of each other. I remember the children in Twelve, crying on my mother’s table, just needing more food. Johanna has ensured that here, that never has to happen. It is the most incredible act of kindness I have ever known.

I grab Johanna by the back of the neck and kiss her hard.

The action surprises me. All I can think of is the smoothness of her lips, how soft her body feels against mine. She goes rigid for a moment and a chill of fear rushes through me. But then her arms find my waist and she pulls me closer, kissing me back with force. Her tongue glides across my lip and I reach to meet it with my own. The next few moments are a blur as we rush inside, up the stairs, and onto the warm bed. Her arms hold her body above me for a moment and we smile at each other. I recognize a flicker in her eye.

There was always tension between Johanna and me. All the stinging comments she made, the aggression or flippancy towards me. But that tension seemed to have come from somewhere entirely different than I expected.

We are hungry for each other. I have never needed to touch someone the way I need Johanna right now. My hands slide under her shirt as her lips find my neck, biting ever so gently. A moan escapes me. I scratch my fingernails down her back and she nearly screams with pleasure. She removes her shirt and I take off mine. The moment our bare skin touches, I feel like I am on fire and diving into a cool lake all at once. Her lips trail from my neck to my breast. She takes my nipple gently into her mouth. Between my legs, I feel white-hot and tingling. I hold her hand in mine and guide it to where I want her most. We kiss again. She slides off my pants and undergarments. I flip us over and take off hers as well, reveling in her softness. The moonlight is illuminating her magnificence. Our touches are rough with desire but still caring, cautious. She is on top of me once again and her kisses begin to make their way down my body. I arch off the bed, aching for her touch.

Johanna’s tongue touches me right there and I swear I see stars. Her hands grip my hips, pulling me closer. I hear myself screaming her name before I realize my lips have moved. Every inch of my body is tingling, shaking, and then the hard feeling of bliss. My body is warm rubber, melting at her touch. We wrap around each other. I climb on top and our hips meet. I am still sensitive between my legs, but it feels so good against Johanna’s thigh, and my hip is touching her just right. I move with her body, pressing against her as she whispers into my ear. I hear my name and many good-natured curse words. Her hands grip the back of my thigh and pull me tighter. I need her to feel the way I did. That pure moment of perfection. We move faster against each other and soon she is screaming for me, grabbing every inch of me she can find, until a final cry escapes her and she collapses into the bed. My blood is rushing, my heart pounding in my ears. The heat between us is immense. We curl into each other and fall into a heavy, dreamless sleep.


	9. In Front of the Fire Again

When I wake up in the morning, Johanna is still curled up and softly snoring. I put on my clothes and slip outside. I sit down on the soft grass of the island, looking out over the water.

Any kiss I have ever had before came with a bitter aftertaste of confusion or conflict. If I let myself feel hunger I would be guilty about it, or I would wonder what the kiss meant, and they just felt ruined. But right now, all I feel is content. The cool air of the lake tingles on my skin and I just smile.

I hear the door of the cabin open and then Johanna is sitting next to me. She gives me a gentle, knowing smile. We both chuckle a bit as we break eye contact. We laugh at the absurdity of our lives and seem to giggle at the final break of this tension between us. I think we’re both just surprised at the fact that it took so long.

Her hand finds mine and I hold it tightly in my lap. Slowly, she leans her body against me and tucks her head against my shoulder.

“Hey,” my voice cracks slightly and I swallow hard. “Last night was amazing.”

Johanna lifts her head up. “But?”

“What? Hey, there’s no but. Just that it was great. Why did you think—”

“I’m sorry,” she responds, nuzzling her head against the side of my arm. “I was scared there had to be something wrong.”

“There’s nothing wrong. I promise.”

 “Okay.”

I lift her head up and kiss her softly. I pull away and kiss her cheek, her forehead. She smells like the forest and I just want to get lost in her soft hair.

“God, this is wonderful. I just barely know what to do, you know?”

“I know,” I tell her, wrapping my arm around her shoulder as we both look out over the lake. “This wasn’t something I expected. It’s good, though. It’s really good.”

“I didn’t expect it either, but I can’t pretend I didn’t want it to.”

I laugh. “I should’ve known when you took off your tree costume for me.”

She rolls her eyes. “What can I say, I was desperate. I knew we could die in a few days and I thought you were hot.”

“It _was_ pretty hot,” I grin at her and pull her in for another kiss. I just need to be kissing her every moment now. I wrap my arms around her and pull her closer as the kiss grows deeper. I start nipping and suckling along her neck and she moans slightly.

“Jesus, Katniss.”

We both catch our breath for a second and look at each other. “Sorry. I just, I haven’t really done this before. I really like this. With you.”

I blush and look away. I feel like a bumbling mess, trying to express these things. It’s not that I’ve never had sexual thoughts. I’ve just never acted on them in this way, never been able to kiss someone without an emotional hangover.

“Don’t you dare apologize. I like this too. I’m still having to remind myself I’m not dreaming.” Johanna smiles at me and kisses my nose. I could melt, it’s so cute. “Also, it’s kind of chilly out here, mind if we go back inside?”

I follow her into the house and she starts a fire. She brews us some coffee and we both settle into a large chair in front of the fireplace. It’s a plush, red plaid one, and she calls it a ‘loveseat’. Johanna is sitting against the arm of the chair with her legs open, and I lean back into her. One of her arms wraps around my waist as the other holds her mug. I sip my coffee holding onto the cup with both hands.

We don’t say anything out loud, but I feel like we’re speaking through our touch. The way she pulls me closer and nuzzles my hair. The way my hand trails along her smooth leg to the edge of her shorts. A day ago I couldn’t have imagined this but here we are, tangled up in each other, and it feels as natural as breathing.

“Johanna,” I start softly, setting my coffee down on the side table. “Why exactly did you invite me up here?”

“Honestly? I mean, I knew I had feelings for you. I’d always had a crush on you. It was a little complicated since most of my feelings were wrapped up in all my repressed shit and rage. But I liked you, I missed you. Not just as a crush, just as… you. I wanted to see you. And I figured if I got up the courage to tell you how I felt, that would be a bonus.”

I turn my head and smile at her, then kiss her softly. “You’re adorable, you know that?”

“I don’t think anyone has called me that since I was five.”

“Oh hush, you little thistle,” I swat her arm playfully and she kisses my cheek.

We relax and just revel in the warmth, both of the fire and each other. I think back to my days in front of the fire after the war. The emptiness and sadness I felt as I sat there. But now I’m curled up and feeling so different – I feel a bit more whole, more _me._ I feel like who I really am is finally falling into place, after all the chaos and healing, here I am rising again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was as far as I'd gotten before I published this. I'm still working on it and hope to be publishing more soon!


	10. A Shared First

Johanna and I end up spending most of the day in front of the fire. We finally get up to make dinner – we’d brought over a few cuts of moose and some vegetables from the garden. Sitting at the table, we end up talking about the simplest of things, like our favorite recipes and stories of our pets. As we’re cleaning up, I find myself staring at Johanna washing the last few dishes. The way her strong muscles move beneath her shirt stir up this feeling in me that rises from between my legs and catches in my throat. I walk up behind her and slide my hands underneath her shirt and across the smooth skin of her stomach.

“Well hello there,” she purrs, clucking her tongue at me. She quickly rinses off her soapy hands and spins around.

I kiss her harder than I expected to, but as soon as our lips meet I can’t help wanting more of her. She slides off my shirt then flips us so that I’m pressed against the sink. Grabbing my waist, she turns me around and begins to kiss down my back. I’ve still got remnants of the battle there and by the light of day, I feel a bit embarrassed.

Johanna lightly kisses each scarred piece of skin. I can feel her lips linger over the jagged edges so tenderly. She whispers, “You’re beautiful, Katniss.”

I start to tear up. I turn around and wrap my arms around her tightly, burying my head in her neck. She relaxes into me and pulls me closer. Her grip gets hard and I feel my shoulder get damp.

“Johanna?” I pull back and see she is crying. “Baby! What’s wrong?”

I’m slightly surprised at myself calling someone a pet name, but it shows up so naturally. Johanna doesn’t speak for a minute and I’m starting to panic. Have I done something wrong?

“We need to talk about something. Here, let’s go upstairs.” Johanna’s voice is shaky, but not angry. I follow her to the bed and we sit down next to each other. She grips my hand tightly between both of hers.

“I’m sorry. I’m not sure what I did, but I’m sorry,” I whisper, fighting back my tears again.

“No! No, it’s not you, you didn’t do anything. C’mere.” Johanna kisses my forehead and smiles sweetly. “Katniss, you’ve done nothing wrong. There’s just been something on my mind that I have to tell you about. It’s a bit of a long story though.”

Relief washes over me. I kiss Johanna’s shoulder. “I’ve got all the time in the world.”

She smiles at me, then looks back at our entangled hands. Taking a deep breath, she begins.

“I told you about my mother, you remember all that, right?”

The night with the wine. Despite my cloudiness from the alcohol, it was still clear. “I remember.”

“Growing up, it was my mother, my brother and I. My brother was about 22 when I was reaped. He always told me he would’ve volunteered for me if he’d been young enough. After the Games, Snow took a liking to me, for some godforsaken reason. I really just wanted to spend my time with my family, you know? But he kept inviting me back to the Capitol, I couldn’t do much about it.”

She takes another raggedy breath, steadying herself. “He would parade me around, introduce me to disgusting Capitol men. One night I was in my hotel room when this man walked in. Said Snow sent him for me. And he comes at me, tried to kiss me, and I knew what it was. Snow would whore out victors. I should’ve expected it. But I couldn’t take it. I beat the shit out of that guy, slammed him into a table, tied him up and left the Capitol. By then I was a little star of the show and I managed to sneak off without needing an escort. Even though I’d gone through so much, I hadn’t actually had sex with anyone. I didn’t want to sleep with anyone I didn’t love, as cheesy as it sounds. I ran back to Seven. I knew Snow would be angry but…”

Johanna runs her fingers along my hand, tapping them slightly. I can tell she’s holding back a floodgate, both from the tears and the story that rushes out of her. “When I got back to the Victor’s Village, I saw two Peacekeepers holding my mother and brother at gunpoint. They were on their knees, crying. I tried to do something, I ran towards them but… the Peacekeepers shot them both. In the head. Then left. Fuck, I had to bury them myself Katniss. I had to bury them knowing I was the reason they died.”

Johanna breaks into sobs and falls against my chest. I wrap myself around her as if I could hold her broken parts in one piece. I find myself crying softly as well. I know what it’s like to lose family, and I know what it’s like to know it was my fault. But I didn’t lose everyone, and I didn’t have to bury anyone myself. I think of Prim. I haven’t thought of Prim in longer than I want to admit. I push her memory away to keep myself from going through life without constantly weeping. But poor Prim, her singed body, I imagine putting that in the ground myself, and how that would haunt me. I can’t imagine how Johanna stayed strong. No wonder she had this rage, no wonder her emotions were always a bit off before. I have no idea what kind of person I’d be if I went through that.

I kiss the top of Johanna’s head and she lifts her eyes to me. “It’s just… last night was my first time, Katniss. And I wanted you to know that.”

“Really?” I’m honestly a bit surprised, the girl who stripped in front of me, who wanted to shock me in my purity. “It was mine, too.”

But I start to realize what she means. Her family was killed because she refused to give up her body for a price. She unknowingly sacrificed them for her own sexuality. And I was the one she gave that piece of herself to. That small part of her life that the Capitol never touched. My bare body is also something the Capitol never got to manipulate – even though they thought they did since I’d been impregnated. It almost made me shudder, the idea that I might’ve given myself to the pawn in my desperate love story. The only person I’d shared my body with was the one holding my hand for dear life.

“I understand,” I tell her, running my fingertip along her palm. “The Capitol never got that from you. You held on to it, and I did, too. And we…”

“Gave it to each other,” her face lights up as she gives a calm, slow smile. “God, that sounds like a terrible line in a Capitol television show.”

“You should really stop pretending like you aren’t a romantic, silly.” I kiss her cheek and pull her against me. Johanna settles her body into my shoulder and wraps her arm around my waist.

She pinches me ever so lightly and nuzzles against me. “And give up this tough girl act after all these years? Yeah, right.”


	11. New Stories

Johanna and I leave the island right as the sun is setting. It’s almost as beautiful as the sunrise we witnessed on the way there. The dark purple starts to wash over the sky as we reach the house and the dogs run out to greet us. I pet Bear’s fluffy head and try to calm down Blue as he jumps all over me. Once we get inside I check on Buttercup and find him sleeping in the living room, sprawled out over the large fluffy rug. He nearly blends into it.

Johanna kisses me lightly and tells me she’s going upstairs to take a shower. I decide to make myself some tea – she has a large collection of loose dried tea, as well as tea in little bags like they had in the Capitol. I walk out on the porch overlooking the lake. It’s still twilight and the last streaks of pink are fading over the mountains. In the back of my mind, I think about Prim.

I haven’t given myself much time to mourn her properly. I sat numb in front of a fire for a few months. But I haven’t truly thought of her. One of the only concrete things that has happened since she died was when Peeta planted the flowers for her outside of my house.

She was the one I’d do anything for. Sometimes I wondered if she was the only one I cared about. My mother and I were always distant, Peeta and Gale were both confusing and difficult. But Prim and I, we were each other’s. We took care of each other. I can still remember volunteering for her, the way it felt to step up. It was pure instinct. I didn’t think or reason or judge. It was automatic for Prim.  

Looking out to the giant lake, the mountains, the tall skinny pines, I suddenly miss District Twelve. Truly, I miss Prim in District Twelve. I have distanced myself from it, gone as far as I could, but still District Twelve lingers with me. Perhaps it’s because of how open I’ve been all of a sudden – sharing the heart of myself with another person in a way I never have before. I’ve opened up, and now all of these feelings kept behind stone walls are tumbling out.

The hot tears burn my eyes and I try to blink them away. This is a soft, slow sort of crying. The heart-slashed sobs I used to have for Prim have faded out. I have her and many others to mourn for, and all I have now is the residual sadness I know I’ll have to carry for the rest of my life.

I hear the door slide closed and Johanna walks out onto the porch. I try to give her a half-smile, just to let her know it isn’t her fault, but she must know. She sits down on the bench next to me and silently reaches for my hand. I hold onto her and we both watch the twilight sink fast into darkness. In the sky there’s only a wide crescent, but it feels as bright as a full moon.

Johanna stands up and kisses my forehead, then picks up my tea cup and disappears inside. A few minutes later she emerges with two cups and hands one to me. She’s made me a tea with a slight spice to it and a splash of milk. I’ve noticed that she’s opened the glass door behind me and I can feel the warmth from the fireplace on my back. I smile and feel my cheeks blush slightly.

“Prim really would have liked you,” I say quietly, almost more to myself than Johanna.

“I think she did. I met her once,” she replies, smiling.

I thought my mother and I had a monopoly on memories of Prim and I’m overwhelmed to hear a new one. I catch a sob welling in my throat. I think it might be happy tears, if those are something that can still exist for me. “Really? Tell me about it.”

Johanna sets down her tea on the deck and turns to face me, holding both my hands in my lap. “It was after the Block test, when I had my meltdown and all. I wasn’t exactly nice company for anyone in the hospital. I was still a rage monster, you know? I was so mad about losing it and not getting to go to the Capitol after all that work. And I was still pissed that they used water on me. It felt like being tortured again.”

I kiss Johanna’s hands lightly and she leans forward to kiss my lips. She continues.

“I know I’d been in the hospital for a while, but I don’t remember how long. They had me on a lot of sedatives. One day I wake up and see her, Prim. I recognized her from your picture and the Reaping and seeing you with her a few times in Thirteen. She brought me a tray of food and sat it down in front of me. Everyone was running away from me then, you know? I was all damaged and angry and scary. But she didn’t look scared of me like the other nurses.

She sat down next to me and asked me how I was feeling. I started rattling off medical bullshit but then I saw she didn’t have a chart. She wasn’t checking on me as a nurse. I remember I stopped in the middle of a sentence and asked her if she was just there to talk to me. She told me she was – she’d heard some of the other nurses talking about me and wanted to come see me. She knew you and I were friends. She called us friends, I don’t think we’d called each other friends yet. I asked her if you were gone and told me you were. You hadn’t been reported dead yet at that point so she was still pretty hopeful.

I swear, that girl had the most calming presence. Like I’d just been growling and snapping for days but something about her, I just didn’t feel as angry. We talked for a little while about the hospital – she told me about learning healing things and wanting to be a doctor. She asked if there was anything she could do to make me feel more comfortable. I mentioned the pine needle bundle you’d made me, and she said she’d try and make me another one.

I asked her who else was at the Capitol, and she mentioned Gale was there. I rolled my eyes and she laughed. She told me she wasn’t a big fan of it all either. I said I thought you deserved better than those boys. And then… she got this look, this little grin. I’m not sure, but I think she knew.”

“Knew?” I ask, barely whispering. I’m still mesmerized. Just to know something more about Prim, to catch the few last fleeting glimpses of her, it’s like she’s here again if only for a second.

“Knew how I felt about you. She didn’t say anything, but I think she’d figured it out. The way she asked me about you. She asked if I was going to see you when you got back, and I told her I was. I wanted to tell you that before, but I didn’t know how to bring it up. Part of the reason I wanted to see you was because I told her I would. I um, I wanted to keep that little promise.”

I lunge forward on the bench and pull Johanna into my arms as I start to cry. We wrap around each other tightly and I kiss her shoulder, her neck, nuzzle into her and breathe deeply. I never expected this connection, never thought I’d be hearing more stories about my sister.

“God, Johanna,” I half-laugh through my tears. “Next time you need to tell me a few earth-shattering things, let’s space them out a bit more.”

She laughs as well and kisses me. We end up making our way back inside to sit by the fire. I turn Johanna’s story over a few times in my head. I think of Prim’s smile. It’s just like her, finding the people who need her the most. Taking the time to help those who others shied away from. Just like the growling fluffy cat asleep on the rug in front of me.


	12. Our House

Johanna and I spent the next week in a form of willful bliss. We did something neither of us had been able to do for years – we just had fun. For two days we went hiking in the woods around the cabin and fished down by the lake. Then we sampled wine and read books together. Johanna even showed me some of her cooking techniques and we made some incredible meals together… some of which ended with her on top of me while I was spread on the kitchen floor.

One day I ask Johanna where her laundry room was. She’d mentioned it in passing before. She leads me to a door right next to her front door, on the side by the kitchen. We both pause for a second as we walk into the tiny room. There was a reason Johanna never showed me the laundry room – I was never supposed to be here a long enough time to necessitate clothes washing. I was now going on my third week at Johanna’s cabin. I knew that I certainly didn’t want to go back to District Twelve, but I hadn’t really prepared myself for the idea of living with Johanna full time. We’d only just started finding each other in these new ways. The next step wasn’t exactly supposed to be moving in together.

As we load the clothes in the black metal drum, I realize I should probably wash the clothes that are still on my body. I slip off my shirt and toss it in. This elicits an eyebrow raise from Johanna, who leans in to kiss me softly. She starts stripping off the rest of my clothing as she kisses along my neck and shoulder. I’m completely naked now and Johanna slams the top of the machine down, then lifts me up and places me on top of it. Her head immediately goes between my legs and I thread one hand through her hair, the other behind me as I try to keep my balance. I bite my lip and let my head fall back as I give myself over to the way Johanna makes me feel.

Once I’m sputtered and spent, she stands, expecting it to be over. I have only just started to figure out how to pleasure Johanna. I’ve been kicking myself for being so timid, but in the moment I often freeze up. She’s always been understanding of this though, and never pressures me to go farther. But I’m craving her right now, I want her in the exact way she just had me. I start kissing her as hard as I can, and running my hand between her legs. She moans in approval. I lead her into the hallway, through the living room and fling open the door to the library. She’s stripped off clothing along the way and all she has left now are a black pair of undergarments that resemble shorts. I sit Johanna in one of the plush chairs that faces the window. Outside it’s a hot afternoon and the sun is glaring off the lake. I kneel on the plush carpet, unclothe the last bit of Johanna, and taste her for the first time.

She is bucking against me and both of her hands grab my head. She moans and calls out my name. I wrap my arms around her and grip her hips, pulling her closer and trying to keep contact as she squirms. I can’t believe how good this feels, how fun it is, how much I want her to scream for me. Soon enough she does just that and I moan against her. She shakes and shivers then pulls me up to kiss me full on the mouth.

“Holy fuck, Katniss,” she says breathily against my neck, grinning wildly.

“So that was okay?” My timid nature seeps out of me before I get a chance to quell it.

“Okay? That was incredible. God, you’re amazing.”

We nuzzle against each other and snuggle up, both looking out the window. I find Johanna’s hand and hold it tightly.

“Can I…talk to you about something?” I look down at our hands, my heart starting its attempt to bound out of my chest.

“Of course.” Johanna’s voice is steady as ever as she runs her hand gently along my arm.

“I know that all of this was supposed to be a just a trip. But the thing is, I’ve loved being here. I love this cabin and I love spending time with you. I don’t want to go live in District Twelve and just come up here on weekends. I want to stay here. With you,” I pause and look out the window, still not ready to meet Johanna’s eyes. “But I don’t want to make assumptions or take advantage of your generosity. I’ve never really done this thing. Being in an actual relationship where the world isn’t ending around me. From what I know, it’s supposed to move slower. I just…all I know is that I don’t want to leave you.”

Johanna touches my cheek and when I meet her eyes, they’ve swelled with tears. She kisses me gently, firmly, and rests her forehead against mine.

“Of course you can stay here, Katniss. I would love that. I want you to live with me. I would love for this place to be ours.”

We wrap into a hug and hold each other tightly. I’m flooded with a feeling of warmth, security. I look around the room and out over the lake. This place, it can be mine, too.

Somewhere in the house, a loud buzzer goes off.

“Well if you’re gonna stick around, I might as well show you how the washer and dryer work instead of doing it all for you. Come on,” Johanna says as she stands up and pulls me up with her.

I kiss her cheek and follow her happily through our house.


	13. Waking Memories

That night, I have a nightmare much worse than I’ve had in months. I was in a Capitol prison. Peeta and Gale were torturing me. Peeta has his hands around my neck, just like when he first came to Thirteen. Gale is whipping my back. The anger in their eyes is like firebombs.

I wake up and hear my own screams. I feel a pressure on my body and realize Johanna is on top of me, holding my arms down, crying as she says it's alright. Her hands reach up, too close to my neck. Her face blends with Peeta’s and I wrench myself from underneath her, running to the windowed room beside her bathroom. I slam the door shut. When I huddle in the corner I’m reminded of the times I would hide out in the bowels of Thirteen. I wrap my arms around my own body and try to remember how to breathe.

The sun is only just starting to rise when Johanna opens the door to the windowed room. Our eyes meet and I know I must look worse than I feel, as her face turns pale. She crosses the room and sits a few feet in front of me, setting the mug down between us. I pick it up and sip gingerly.

“Thank you. What is this?” My voice sounds so hoarse. I realize how much I must have screamed to turn my voice to gravel.

“It’s coffee, and chocolate. A mix of the two. I thought you would like it,” her voice falters slightly and tears brim the corner of her eyes.

“Hey. It’s okay. I’m sorry I freaked out last night.”

I reach for her and our hands entwine. She looks down at our fingers and whispers, “It’s okay if you don’t want to stay here. You don’t have to.”

The context of my nightmare dawns on me like the sunlight filling the room. I set the mug to the side and lunge forward, wrapping myself around Johanna. She grabs onto me so tightly, clinging to my shirt, my hair.

“No, no, no! I want to stay with you. It’s okay,” I kiss her cheek, her lips, her temple.

She runs her hands all over me, pressing and touching lightly. She is leaned against the back wall and I am sitting sideways with her legs on either side of me. Her whole body seems to envelop me.

I let myself think of the nightmare. For most of the night in this room I just tried to catch my breath and calm my nerves. With Johanna holding me, I can let my mind dip into the flashing, terrifying images. In the dream, Peeta and Gale were both in the worst state I’d ever seen: Peeta as the thin, deranged boy brought back from the Captiol, and Gale with his back like fresh meat after the whipping. It was as if my memories of them were chasing me, begging me not to forget. I think that I could never forget them, but the past few weeks say otherwise. I have lost myself in being with Johanna – but I can’t take a permanent vacation from my past. I can’t just let them slip out of my mind like dust.

“I need to ask you something,” I whisper, then cough, my voice still ragged. Johanna hands me my chocolate-coffee and it warms my throat.

“Of course,” she responds. Her grip on me tightens, but in a way where I can tell she is reassuring me of her presence rather than attempting to keep me close to her.

“Can I still…” I want to say love, but love is a word that I cannot feel in my mouth yet. “Can I still care about Peeta and Gale?”

“Sweetheart.” Johanna gets this sad, soft smile, like powder snow. “I never want to give you permission to feel anything. Your feelings belong to you, completely. I can’t limit or control them. Yes, of course you can care about Gale and Peeta. I know that I said a lot of shit about them and about the whole obligation and competition stuff and maybe I was a bit harsh. But they were…they are, they are both so important to you. And that’s totally okay.”

“Thank you,” I kiss her and touch our foreheads together. Hers scrunches against mine.

“Do you still care about either of them… romantically?” her voice wavers with nervousness.

“No.” The answer comes out of me quick and heavy, floating between us for a second. “I really don’t. I can’t ever really trust Gale again. I’m not even sure if I want to see him again. But with Peeta… I don’t know, he was my top priority for so long. I pushed him away so fast that and maybe it’s really hitting me now. I know I never want him to be my husband or boyfriend or anything, but I’m not sure if I want to cut him entirely out of my life. Does that make sense?”

Johanna nods. “It does.”

“I care about you. Romantically. Just you.” This feels awkward and clunky to say aloud, but Johanna lights up and kisses me.

“I care about you romantically, too.”

We both sort of laugh at the exchange and nuzzle closer.

As the day goes on we make our way downstairs and Johanna cooks breakfast. The dogs come and sit next to the table, begging for sausage until Johanna tosses a few pieces. She goes outside to tend to the garden and check on her wine, and I stay to clean up the kitchen. It’s so quiet and my mind starts to whir. I think of an idea, a few actually, and when Johanna comes in I pull her into the living room and pour her a glass of wine.

She kisses my cheek, “Thanks, baby.”

I sip my own glass, a white wine that tastes bright and sharp. “You’re welcome. So, I’ve been thinking a lot today.”

Her eyebrow raises as she sits down on the couch. I settle in next to her and grab her hand in mine. “Go on?”

“I wanted to go back to Twelve sometime soon to get things from my old house. I know when I go back, I’ll probably need to talk to Haymitch… and Peeta. I thought perhaps you could come with me. I could show you some of Twelve. And I kind of just want you with me, especially after I talk to Peeta and everything. I know it seems odd, me wanting to go back there. But I want to give it a proper goodbye, you know?”

“I understand. I would love to go with you. I’d be honored to see Twelve with you, Katniss,” Johanna lifts my hand and kisses it lightly.

“Perfect.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Saw Mockingjay last night, got inspired to work more on this. I have a lot more planned, get ready for the trip to Twelve!


	14. Things of the Past

Johanna and I spend the next day planning the trip to Twelve. There are so many things to attend to at the house while we’re gone, things I didn’t even think of. The garden needed watering, the distillery had to be checked on, the dogs needed to be fed. There is a Capitol gadget called an automatic feeder that can help with the animals, but some things have to be looked over by a person. Johanna decides to call the shopkeeper from the vegetable market, Amos, and asks him to watch over everything while we’re gone.

“He’s the last person I really know here,” Johanna says quietly after hanging up the phone. “Not that I knew that many people in the first place. The other victors were gone after the war… for a lot of different reasons.”

“Were there other people, before?” I pause and tilt my head towards her. I’m sitting on the couch in front of the fireplace, which has only a few embers in it. The orange glow looks like the sunset outside.

“Not really. Just my family. I kept to myself in school. I didn’t really have many friends. After the games, and after… after my family was gone, I did spend some time with the other victors and their friends. There was a big fire pit at the edge of the forest in the Victor’s Village. They’d all light huge bonfires and get drunk and throw axes. It was nice for me then – I just got to go off the handle and destroy shit.”

I raise an eyebrow at her and smirk. Johanna did always have a love for destroying shit.

“What about you? Besides…”

“Besides Peeta and Gale, there was Madge. You know, the one who gave me the Mockingjay pin. She was sweet, really. She used to eat lunch with me when I was a kid. When I got back from the games, Madge and I would hang out, she taught me to play the piano.”

I let myself smile and think of the songs we used to play. But then I remember the ruins of Madge’s house. The ash of bodies and piano keys that lingered in the air.

“She didn’t make it through the bombing.”

Johanna crosses the room and sits next to me on the couch, holding my hand in hers. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

She toys with my fingertips between hers. “If… if you hadn’t have pulled the boldest move ever and kissed me. If we weren’t together like this. Would you still have wanted to stay here?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I know how much Twelve means to you. Am I taking you away from that? Do you want to stay there? I could come with you, you know.”

“Johanna, I can’t stay in Twelve anymore. Even if we hadn’t… even if I hadn’t come to Seven, I would want to leave Twelve. It’s too much. I want to say goodbye to it, I do, I still want to make this trip. And I’ll probably want to go back for visits. But I think I knew this before I even left - I’m done living in Twelve.”

She nods quickly and kisses the back of my hand. “Okay. I just wanted to be sure.”

Behind us the dogs begin to bark and bolt outside. The first few times they did this I went into battle mode again, my senses heightened, and Johanna even saw my whole body tense. But now I knew it was just a squirrel, or a rabbit, or possibly just a branch falling from a tree. I’d started to know this place.

“I thought we could finish packing everything tomorrow and leave at the noon train,” I say, leaning against Johanna’s shoulder.

“Could we um, make it the evening one? There was something I needed to do before we left,” she responds with a slight quake in her voice.

“Oh. Of course.”

I pause, but Johanna doesn’t continue. A part of me wants to ask further, but I swallow my questions and she kisses me gently. Slowly, she leads me up the stairs and into bed. Her touches tonight are so light, her hands barely brushing me, her lips so incredibly soft. I fall asleep with only her fingertips against my skin.

Once we are packed – which isn’t an elaborate statement for me, my possessions barely outnumber my appendages – I walk with Johanna around the cabin grounds to check everything before we leave. She is oddly quiet this morning and still just as soft as the night before. When we get into the car she stays quiet as we drive down the mountain, then turn down a road I haven’t noticed before. It suddenly changes into a paved Capitol-style street and I realize we must be headed to the Victor’s Village.

“I can’t leave Seven without going here first,” she says quietly.

Her family. _I had to bury them myself, Katniss._ This is where she buried her family. I reach my hand over to her thigh and rub slow circles, which is all I can think of to do.

The Victor’s Village of Seven isn’t cabins, which surprises me. In fact it looks rather similar to Twelve. The houses have a few touches of their own, like log fences wrapping around them. They are all empty, but mostly undisturbed. We stop at the end of the street in front of a tall white house with light blue shutters. Johanna takes my hand and leads me around the house to its large backyard. There in a far corner is a small Weeping Willow, and beneath it are two grave markers. The markers are two simple logs, one taller than the other, with one letter carved into both. The taller log has an A and the other an R.

Johanna lets go of my hand and gets on her knees in front of the graves. The grass has mostly grown over them, but there are bald patches of soil still. I stand behind her and put my hand on her shoulder, rubbing circles across the back of her neck. I think of the people who will never have graves – Prim, my father, Finnick, Boggs, the victims in District Twelve. I think of Johanna with her hands in this dirt, covering the faces of the people she seemed to love more than anyone else.

“Aster. That was my mother’s name. My brother was Rowan.”

She pauses and turns back to me, her eyes brimmed with tears that have yet to fall. Her hand pulls me slightly and I kneel down beside her.

“They… they would have liked you…” she chokes out. “I think about them all the time. What I could’ve done to save them. I would’ve done anything Snow wanted. That second, with the Peacekeepers’ guns on them, Snow could’ve asked me to do whatever he wanted and I would have said yes. Why didn’t he just tell me to do something, Katniss? He just fucking killed them and then never even used me again, he killed them and he left me here. I would’ve done _anything!_ ”

Her sobs grow louder and the last word is so desperate that it causes me to cry as well. I pull her close to me and kiss along her neck and shoulder. “This isn’t your fault, Johanna. There was nothing you could have done. We had to burn down half of the Districts just to have a world where people didn’t die at Snow’s whim. You… god, Johanna, you were just trying to be your own person. And now you are the most incredible person I’ve ever met.”

She kisses me for a moment before a sob breaks through her lips. Her head rests on my shoulder as her breathing starts to steady. 

“I’m so glad you were the one I got to be with, Katniss. I am. I just really want them to be here too. I miss them. So goddamn much.”

“I know. I wish they could be here too.”

She takes a deep breath and lets out a laugh. “We’re supposed to be on a train in like an hour and here I am bawling my fucking eyes out, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. Thank you for sharing this with me.”

“I’m glad I brought you. I can’t leave here without seeing them. If something happened and I didn’t make it back, I couldn’t live with myself knowing that I didn’t visit… their graves before I left.”

“I understand. Sometimes I wish there was something left of Prim that I could visit.”

Johanna nods solemnly and stands up, pulling me to my feet. “Maybe when we get back we can make something for her, too.”

I kiss Johanna’s cheek. “Maybe I can bring back a few pages from the sad little book.”

She looks at me and breaks into this laugh that seems to break up some of the sadness in her chest.

We get to the station just in time for the last evening train. When we close the door of our sleeper car, my vision blurs with the memory of Peeta holding me during my nightmares. Johanna pulls my hand and looks at me with such adoration, and suddenly I feel nauseous. In less than a day I’ll be telling Peeta that I’m leaving and all I can think of is the stalwart boy who held me close even when he knew exactly how I felt about him.

Johanna’s eyes bring me back to the moment and I fall back onto the bed. She climbs beside me carefully.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m thinking about how sad Peeta will be when I tell him everything. And I feel stupid. I know I don’t owe him anything but god, he was just so… he tried so hard for me. We used to spend every night in the train car together so that I wouldn’t wake up screaming from nightmares.”

Johanna looks around the car and back to me. “Should I have gotten us two beds?”

“No! I love sharing a bed with you. Just being in the train car, knowing where we’re headed, it just hit me. I’ve been so focused on going to Twelve the place that I wasn’t thinking of the people there. Well, the person.”

I don’t even realize how stiff my body is until Johanna wraps herself around me and the tension just slips away. I tuck my head against her chest.

“Shh, just think about something good. I want you to tell me about all the places you love in Twelve.”

Without even having to think, I start talking about the Meadow. Then my old house. I even talk about the places that are now just ash, like the hob. I tell her about the evening primrose in front of the house and the plants I am named for. At some time during that night, Johanna helps me understand just how much I can love a place and still want to leave it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's back! So I have no idea how many subscribers there are to this work (is this something I can view on AO3 and just don't know how?) but however many of you there are, I hope you like this return! I was suddenly in a writing mood and I hope it continues.


	15. The End of a Game

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katniss finally sees Peeta and tells him she's leaving.

Johanna and I stay in my old house for the night. My bed feels so small compared to hers - though we end up wrapped around each other in the middle anyways.

We stop by Haymitch’s place in the morning for breakfast since there’s no food left in my house. He and Johanna talk like old war buddies at the table. She tells him about the boxes and asks for his help in setting them up.

“You bet. You don't have to do anything, the boy and I need a few more things to keep us busy. We'll get them started and make sure they stay full,” he pauses and takes a dragging sip from his coffee mug. “Peeta will have to convince people to start using them. No one really cares about the town drunk anymore.”

Johanna whaps the back of his head with a dish rag. “I swear, Haymitch, you keep talking like that and we’ll get you your own head doctor.”

“Don’t worry. I ain’t offing myself anytime soon. Not until I at least feel the touch of a lady again.”

“All you need to do to make that happen is talk to our favorite Pink Princess again,” Johanna responds. When I tilt my head she explains, “That’s what we used to call Effie back in the day.”

“Effie? Are you kidding me? She’s been in the Capitol for over a year with no Hunger Games to keep her busy. She probably has butterflies tattooed on her eyeballs by now.”

Johanna chuckles. “Twenty bucks says they’re on her asscheeks.”

“Okay!” I burst out, shaking my head. “Anyways. Johanna, once you’re done with your coffee, I’d like to take you somewhere.”

“Make it a short trip, you’re talking to that boy  _ today _ .” Haymitch takes Johanna’s mug out of her hand. “You try to leave here without seeing him and I’ll drag you out of Seven myself.”

“God, Haymitch, I promise I’m going to talk to him. Calm down.”

Johanna tugs at my sleeve and we head for the door. “See you later, Haymitch. You should call Effie, okay? We’ll let you know when we’re back.”

We end up sneaking around the back of the house when I see Peeta next to his front door. Seeing as I still have no idea what to say to him, I can’t help putting it off a little longer. 

I start to show Johanna around what’s been rebuilt of District Twelve. It’s cleaned up now, and the merchant’s district has started to be set up again. Right now there are only three shops - a cobbled-together food market selling mostly wild plants and game meat, a clothing shop, and a general store with a mostly bare shelves. The three shops are supplemented with goods from Thirteen, like food rations and grey clothing. Sometimes people will set up tables or small booths in the new makeshift square, like the Hob all over again. There are rumors of a medicine factory to be built nearby. 

I then lead Johanna to the edge of the town, past embers that seem to still be burning. I take her through the Woods where I used to hunt and lead her farther until we reach the Meadow. Scruffy as it may be, it still makes my chest swell. She clings tighter to my hand and kisses my temple. 

We sit down by the lake and swing our bare feet in the cool water. Right along the edge I find a white flower. I pick it and hand it to her.

“This is the katniss plant. It’s what I was named for.”

She smells it, then tucks it behind her ear. “It’s beautiful.”

We haven’t spoken much today - besides a few quick explanations of where I’m taking her, we both have stayed silent. I still feel her taking everything in.

“You know, I keep looking at that ridge over there,” she nods into the distance beyond the lake. “And I think it would be a great place for a house.”

I raise my eyebrow at her. “Johanna…”

“I’m just saying. I could plant some pine trees.”

“You’re sweet. But I’m okay. Really.”

Her head finds my shoulder, and she near-nuzzles against me. “If you ever change your mind. I’ve got the spot picked out.”

I take a deep breath and realize that for the first time since getting to Twelve, I finally don’t smell smoke. Somehow through the bombing this place stayed clean. I want to stay here and pull Johanna on top of me and forget about the sad boy waiting for me back in the Victor’s Village. But as the light in the air grows more red with the afternoon, I know the time is coming. I pull Johanna up and we make the hike back.

When we reach my old house, the sun is nearly setting.  _ Orange, like a sunset.  _ Peeta’s favorite color. My stomach is heavy like coal ash.

Haymitch walks out of his house and meets us. He agrees to come with me to Peeta’s while Johanna stays behind and packs up everything in my house. When we reach Peeta’s, he sighs and gives me a stern look, “If he does anything, tries anything…”

“Haymitch. Come on.”

“Recovered or not, he still got hijacked. We don’t know all the long term problems with that. Just know I’ll be out here listening just in case things go south.

“Thank you.” I lightly squeeze Haymitch on the side of his arm.

The knocking on Peeta’s door reverberates through my bones. When he sees me his whole face lights up. He pulls me into a tight hug.

“Katniss! I’m so glad you’re back!” He’s swinging me now, gripping my arms. “Please, come in.”

The air returns to my chest as he lets me go. His house is tidier than I’ve ever seen - his shoes and boots are lined up next to the door, every rug and painting is level and even. We walk into his living room and I see it piled with canvasses. A lot of them look dark and heavy, abstract pieces streaked with black and red. But the one he has on the easel now is a calm green tree.

“How was your trip?” he asks, moving a stack of small paintings to make room for me on the couch. 

“It’s been great.” I sit down on the far edge and my hands immediately find each other. “That’s part of what I need to talk to you about. My trip… well, turns out it isn’t temporary.”

“What do you mean, Katniss?” 

In my head, I’d planned out small talk, asking him how he was doing, but all of those words stay stuck in the back of my mind like silt. 

“Peeta, I’m moving to District Seven.”

“Is Gale in Seven?”

“Peeta!” I grit my teeth, trying to hold back my anger.  _ He doesn’t deserve that _ . “Gale is not in Seven. I’m not speaking to Gale, I haven’t spoke to Gale in a year.”

“So does this mean you’re asking me to move to District Seven?”

“No, Peeta. It doesn’t.”

He pauses and stares forward blankly, the cold stare like he used to get when we marched on the Capitol. “You’re leaving me.”

“I’m leaving, yes. But this doesn’t mean I’m going to cut you off. I still want to talk to you. I still want to be your friend, Peeta.”

“My  _ friend _ ?” his voice cracks. “After what I did for you? After all that, you want to be my friend? You can’t be serious.”

“Peeta, I’m serious about keeping you in my life. I don’t want to lose you.”

He takes a deep breath. I notice he’s rubbing his wrists against the couch like he used to pull on the handcuffs. “Katniss. I was going to ask you to marry me.”

“I’m sorry, Peeta. I couldn’t do that.”

“You couldn’t do it now? I don’t get it. You go on a trip for a couple months and suddenly you want to throw it all away. What the hell is in Seven?”

_ The best thing that’s ever happened to me.  _ “Peeta. This isn’t about Seven. Even if I stayed in Twelve, honestly even if I’d never left, I still wouldn’t have been able to marry you.”

“I thought… after everything… that’s how we could be. I mean, it would take time. But we could get married, build a new house back in the Seam, have a family.”

“I don’t want children,” I blurt out. It’s true, and it has been true for a while, but I didn’t exactly mean to tell him.

“Of course you want children.”

“No, I really don’t. God, Peeta, you have this life planned out as if I’m just a little piece to drop in the middle. Have you ever even asked me if I wanted a child, or to move back to the Seam?” I’m still trying not to raise my voice, still desperately wanting to protect him even as I know I’m ripping him apart.

“I didn’t have to ask. We know each other, Katniss. We’ve known each other since we were kids. I know you want to get married.”

“Maybe I do want to get married, Peeta. That doesn’t mean I want to get married to  _ you. _ ” I spit out the last word and wish immediately that I could stuff it back into my mouth. His expression hardens into a scowl.

“Wait. No.”

My heart is hammering. He must have seen us. He knows. He knows, and I can’t do this. I stand up and start throwing words up like vomit. “I’m moving to District Seven and that’s final. I still want you in my life, I still want to be your friend-”

“She’s a maniac!” he screams, standing up from the couch. “She tried to  _ kill you!” _

“So did you!” I yell back. “You tried to kill me! You sat in a basement with Gale and decided how I would pick between you, and I made my choice -  _ neither _ !”

“You pick some  _ crazy  _ person, some crazy  _ girl _ , over me? What kind of life can you even have with a girl?”

“It doesn’t matter! I didn’t come here to talk to you about anyone else. I came to tell you that I am leaving. I was trying to be good to you and actually say goodbye, but I see now that none of that matters to you.”

Peeta collapses back onto the couch, leaving me standing over him. His head is in his hands and I hear him start to cry. “You love me. Real or Not Real?”

“Peeta. I love you as a friend. As someone who-”

“Real or Not Real?!”

I know exactly what he means and I start to choke back my own tears. “Not Real.”

“You used to love me. Real or Not Real?”

“Real. Sometimes. It was there, I think.”

He pulls back his hands and pierces me with his sad, desperate stare. “Please Katniss. Please don’t do this.”

“Peeta,” I pause, barely able to talk as I start to cry. “I do love you. I will always want you in my life. I will think of you every time I smell bread or see a sunset. Just because I can’t marry you or have a child, it doesn’t mean I’m abandoning you. Please, Peeta. Please know how much I care about you.

“Katniss, we can figure this out! You don’t have to go. We don’t have to just be friends, I can fix this! Please, Katniss. You have to stay-” he reaches both hands for me, just like he did when he tried to choke me. I jerk back and he falls to the floor. He sobs and cries out my name over and over.

I run out of the house. Haymitch is on the porch, arms folded, jaw clenched. “So this is how it’s gonna be?”

“I can’t do anything else. If I say one more word, neither of us would be able to talk him down.”

“He won’t take no for an answer, huh?” Haymitch puts his hand on my arm and his expression softens.

“He won’t. He can’t do it. He thought we were gonna get married and have babies and-”

“The Mother Mockingjay. I can’t wrap my head around that.” From inside, we both hear a long, screaming sob. Haymitch nods at me and goes for the door. “I’ll handle him. Let me know when you get back to Seven alright.”

I walk away from the house. Somehow I feel both lighter and heavier at the same time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, this chapter is one of the reasons it's taken me a long time to update. The "break up" of sorts was really hard knowing how much history and feeling is between Katniss and Peeta. But I finally bit the bullet and here it is.


End file.
